The TTC’s Vaughan subway extension officially opened for passengers on Sunday, Dec. 17, 2017, almost a decade after construction began in February 2008. The 5.30-mile line represents the first rapid transit operation outside the existing city of Toronto, into the northwestern suburb of Vaughan.

An aviation milestone has been achieved thanks to a half-century of railroad transport. Spirit AeroSystems announced on Feb. 14 that the 10,000th 737 fuselage had left its factory in Wichita, Kans., and was en route by rail to Boeing’s massive assembly plant in Renton, Wash.

Pentair offers the Schroff Interscale plartform, a new concept for building embedded systems that offers design flexibility and affordable customization for industrial Internet of Things (IoT) applications.

Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA), which operates the Atlanta Streetcar 2.7-mile Downtown Loop light rail line, has contracted with Siemens to maintain the fleet of four S70 LRVs which it supplied prior to the opening of the line in December 2014.

Opinion

Until I draw my last breath, I’ll remember that the speed on the curve at Dry Wall is 55 MPH. There were 331 speed restrictions on the 330 miles of the former B&O between Washington, D.C. and Pittsburgh, Pa. (as well as 22 open train order towers) I had to know to qualify as the engineer of Amtrak’s Capitol Limited in 1986, but I’ll never forget that one.

The railroad industry is making steady progress implementing Positive Train Control. You wouldn’t know it though, if you believed some of the choreographed histrionics the House Subcommittee on Railroads and its chairman displayed at a Feb. 15 hearing on PTC.

The battle between labor and the management over mandatory two-person crews is far from over and will heat up if a new Democratic-controlled Congress takes charge in 2019. Hoping for big Democratic wins in the U.S. House and Senate later this year, railroad labor quietly continues to set the stage to push for mandatory two-person train crew legislation.